VMware realizes it doesn’t rule the cloud, boosts support for Amazon

VMware's latest virtualization management software supports the deployment of applications and virtual machines to Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud. That doesn't sound like a big deal—numerous vendors do the same, including Amazon itself—but for VMware, it represents a recognition that it can't control every aspect of its customers' data centers.

VMware has long had an aversion to supporting virtualization tools other than its own, even as rivals like Microsoft and Citrix happily built management software that could control the deployment of virtual machines using both their own hypervisors and VMware's. VMware always had a plausible excuse in that its own vSphere virtualization platform was so widely used that supporting anything else was unnecessary—although Hyper-V's advances are making that argument less convincing.

VMware tried to extend its dominance of the virtualization market to the cloud by signing up service providers who would use VMware infrastructure to provide all the cloud and hosting services customers need. This has not been unsuccessful, but the ubiquity of Amazon Web Services has forced VMware to add to its arsenal or miss out on a big market.

That's why VMware today announced that two newly updated products—vCloud Automation Center 5.1 and vFabric Application Director 5.0—support deployment to Amazon. The announcement builds on VMware's previous development of Cloud Foundry, an open source platform-as-a-service product that can deploy applications to either bare-metal machines or cloud platforms like Amazon, CloudStack, Eucalyptus, Nimbula, and OpenStack.

Automation Center is an updated version of software acquired in VMware's buy of DynamicOps, moving the capabilities into a core part of VMware's product line and integrating it with existing VMware management tools like vCloud Director and vCenter Orchestrator. Automation Center 5.1 allows "policy-based provisioning across VMware-based private and public clouds, physical infrastructure, multiple hypervisors, and Amazon Web Services," VMware said. Supported hypervisors include Microsoft's Hyper-V and Citrix's XenServer. VMware also promises a "cross-cloud storefront" letting administrators, developers, or business users request new IT services.

Application Director 5.0, meanwhile, lets customers "use the same blueprints to deploy applications across multiple virtual and hybrid cloud infrastructures, including Amazon EC2," VMware said. Application Director supports various Microsoft applications including Exchange, SQL Server, and SharePoint, as well as custom apps built on Java, .Net, or Ruby on Rails, allowing deployment of applications with standardized operating system and middleware components. The updated versions of the software will be available before the end of this year.

The announcement was made at this week's VMworld conference in Barcelona, where VMware also unveiled a new "Enterprise Purchasing Program." Following VMware's decision to end its controversial VRAM pricing model for non-service provider customers, the new purchasing program should give VMware a cash infusion while (theoretically) allowing high-volume customers to save by buying in bulk.

Promoted Comments

It's generally more difficult to move existing applications to Azure. It's really intended for building new applications. That's changing now a little bit because Azure started supporting VMs like Amazon does, but the user base would still be a fraction of Amazon's.

Am I the only one thinking that the reason VMware doesn't own the data center at Amazon is pricing? I mean, if you business is supplying racks and racks of hardware, that adds up real fast. So much so that using KVM and building your own control structure like OpenStack is cheap.

It's generally more difficult to move existing applications to Azure. It's really intended for building new applications. That's changing now a little bit because Azure started supporting VMs like Amazon does, but the user base would still be a fraction of Amazon's.

It's generally more difficult to move existing applications to Azure. It's really intended for building new applications. That's changing now a little bit because Azure started supporting VMs like Amazon does, but the user base would still be a fraction of Amazon's.

Actually I've never used anything else. I'm kind of curious as to what IBM/HP are up to as well. The problem with VMware seems that they concentrated too much on the vertical scaling issue. Even if you have the best offering in this area, you still need the software to scale horizontally and that's where MS and Amazon seem to do a better job.

It's generally more difficult to move existing applications to Azure. It's really intended for building new applications. That's changing now a little bit because Azure started supporting VMs like Amazon does, but the user base would still be a fraction of Amazon's.

Actually I've never used anything else. I'm kind of curious as to what IBM/HP are up to as well. The problem with VMware seems that they concentrated too much on the vertical scaling issue. Even if you have the best offering in this area, you still need the software to scale horizontally and that's where MS and Amazon seem to do a better job.

It's generally more difficult to move existing applications to Azure. It's really intended for building new applications. That's changing now a little bit because Azure started supporting VMs like Amazon does, but the user base would still be a fraction of Amazon's.

Even so, vCloud Automation Center supports both EC2 and Azure.

Ah, you must be right. I did not see Azure support listed in VMware documents, but it is in some other press reports.

Actually I've never used anything else. I'm kind of curious as to what IBM/HP are up to as well. The problem with VMware seems that they concentrated too much on the vertical scaling issue. Even if you have the best offering in this area, you still need the software to scale horizontally and that's where MS and Amazon seem to do a better job.

What does this even mean?

vertical scaling refers to the size of the VM (cores,ram).. horizontal refers to the number and communication between the VMs in order to distribute workload, ie message queues.

Actually I've never used anything else. I'm kind of curious as to what IBM/HP are up to as well. The problem with VMware seems that they concentrated too much on the vertical scaling issue. Even if you have the best offering in this area, you still need the software to scale horizontally and that's where MS and Amazon seem to do a better job.

What does this even mean?

vertical scaling refers to the size of the VM (cores,ram).. horizontal refers to the number and communication between the VMs in order to distribute workload, ie message queues.

I know what vertical and horizontal scaling are. I want to know how vSphere, vCloud, and vFabric don't achieve horizontal scaling.

Actually I've never used anything else. I'm kind of curious as to what IBM/HP are up to as well. The problem with VMware seems that they concentrated too much on the vertical scaling issue. Even if you have the best offering in this area, you still need the software to scale horizontally and that's where MS and Amazon seem to do a better job.

What does this even mean?

vertical scaling refers to the size of the VM (cores,ram).. horizontal refers to the number and communication between the VMs in order to distribute workload, ie message queues.

I know what vertical and horizontal scaling are. I want to know how vSphere, vCloud, and vFabric don't achieve horizontal scaling.

I believe what he is referring to is, for instance, Microsoft's System Center 2012 offering. When it comes to creating, configuring, and especially baton waving at a mass number of hybrid Hyper-Visors as well as hybrid VM' OS's it does a pretty fine job. Once you introduce powershell into the mix, it can be very nice indeed. Yes, vSphere and the rest of the VMWare line are now heading in that direction but almost from a standing start in comparison. Microsoft has been particularly strong given their enterprise roots and a real willingness of late not to leave any scrap on the table (like that's anything new).

Don't get me wrong. I've been a long time supporter of VMWare (extremely early beta-tester and for years after). Just each company has had a particular strength. Now that MS is really, really interested in embrace and extend in the enterprise data-center market, VMWare really needs to pay attention. Missteps like vRAM sure don't help. Nice to see something rational happening. Perhaps we are finally getting an idea about what the management shakeup was "really" about?

Actually I've never used anything else. I'm kind of curious as to what IBM/HP are up to as well. The problem with VMware seems that they concentrated too much on the vertical scaling issue. Even if you have the best offering in this area, you still need the software to scale horizontally and that's where MS and Amazon seem to do a better job.

What does this even mean?

vertical scaling refers to the size of the VM (cores,ram).. horizontal refers to the number and communication between the VMs in order to distribute workload, ie message queues.

I know what vertical and horizontal scaling are. I want to know how vSphere, vCloud, and vFabric don't achieve horizontal scaling.

I believe what he is referring to is, for instance, Microsoft's System Center 2012 offering. When it comes to creating, configuring, and especially baton waving at a mass number of hybrid Hyper-Visors as well as hybrid VM' OS's it does a pretty fine job. Once you introduce powershell into the mix, it can be very nice indeed. Yes, vSphere and the rest of the VMWare line are now heading in that direction but almost from a standing start in comparison. Microsoft has been particularly strong given their enterprise roots and a real willingness of late not to leave any scrap on the table (like that's anything new).

Manageability isn't the same as scalability. I'll readily concede the fact that VMware hasn't cared much about managing non-VMware workloads until recently, but that doesn't answer my question. Up until the HV3, there was no reason for VMware to care about managing other hypervisors. The only thing really missing was vSphere/vCloud to EC2 migration and vice versa.

In this instance, the decision on VMware’s part to deploy applications to Amazon is the recognition that it cannot be expected to control all aspects of their customers’ data centres.

The virtualisation market is one which requires businesses to have tight control over their networks, or potentially pay the price. If companies are looking to utilise virtualisation tools, and have data centres a fair distance away from their hardware, then it’s important for them to know exactly what data is flowing over that network.

Having a clear idea of the types of applications running over the network, and giving precedence to the more business-critical ones is important, as this is a foundation for business productivity. Without this, businesses may find their networks crippled by an overflow of applications, resulting in high latency, and unsmooth running of apps.

Virtualisation is a trend which will only increase from here, but it must be accompanied by a controlled, efficient approach to network management too.